Coalition to Salute America's Heroes

The Coalition to Salute America's Heroes (CSAH) was founded mid-2004 by San Diego, California, philanthropist Roger Chapin[1], who also serves as the organization's president [2], as a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization.

It is a donation website to collect funds, materials, and services which CSAH states will be used to help "[w]ounded veterans of the War on Terror" and "their families rebuild their lives." [3]

The organization officially "kicked off" November 9, 2004, in Washington, D.C., with the assistance of retired Army General Tommy R. Franks. [4]

Solicitation

CSAH states that the organization is "partnering with corporate sponsors, individual contributors, and volunteers to provide an easy and meaningful way for individuals and corporations" to help. It is soliciting public contributions "by means of direct tax-deductible donations."

"Ninety-one percent of all money contributed goes directly to service-members and their families," CSAH states, and, because it verifies "eligibility requirements with the Department of Defense, incidences of fraud are rare to non-existent." [5]

The Swift Boat connection

Donations

The CSAH donation page bears the same logos and information as other CSAH web pages. The web address to make a donation, however, is that for DonationReport.com (plus an extension code for CSAH).

The Donatelli Group, which produced the RNC website [10], also created the SWIFTBOATVETSFORTRUTH.ORG website on July 30, 2004, with Connell Donatelli Inc. (a.k.a. The Donatelli Group) as Registrant. Connell Donatelli Inc. was also listed as both Administrator and the Tech Organization for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth website. [11]

Website

The Coalition to Salute America's Heroes SALUTEHEROES.ORG website was registered May 13, 2004, to Becki Donatelli of The Donatelli Group, who is also the website's administrator. The technical contact is Network Solutions, LLC.

Press inquiries

"CRC has helped manage the development of the organization, the planning of its events, and the creation of its marketing materials. CRC works with the Coalition to identify and train disabled heroes from Iraq as spokespeople and implements comprehensive communications campaigns targeting print, television, radio, online media and bloggers."

"An intolerable fraud"

"Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, whose Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has held hearings on the issue and documented the above abuses, has rightly called the conduct of charities like Mr. Chapin’s [CSAH] 'an intolerable fraud'," editorialized the New York Times in February 2008. [1]

The newspaper described a fundraising appeal from CSAH and noted that CSAH "and its sister organization, Help Hospitalized Veterans, were among a dozen military-related charities given a grade of F in a study last December by the American Institute of Philanthropy, a nonprofit watchdog group. These and other charities have collected hundreds of millions of dollars from kind-hearted Americans and squandered an unconscionable amount of it on overhead and expenses -- 70 percent or 80 percent, or more. ... Money that donors surely assumed was going to ease the pain and speed the healing of injured soldiers went instead to junk-mail barrages, inflated executive salaries and other forms of corporate-style bloat." [1] </ref>

The New York Times editorial went on to urge readers to trash or recycle any fundraising appeals from CSAH. "Think of what Mr. Chapin told the House committee when asked what would happen if his charities ever told donors where their money went," the paper suggested. "'If we disclose, which I'm more than happy to do,' he said, 'we'd all be out of business. Nobody would donate. It would dry up.'" [1]